Dear friend,
since it’s July and the Summer holidays will come much later, I took a week off to decompress a bit from work. I had to honour a couple of non-work commitments, but I also managed to squeeze in a few days in London (more on those, probably, later). The intake of films was quite steady anyway…
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F , directed by Mark Molloy, written by Will Beall, Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten, US, 2024.
Home with a terrible headache (not a hangover, even), I fired up Netflix (which I’m still paying for, but using very little) and found this new Beverly Hills Cop adventure. I have no nostalgia for Axel Foley, nor for Eddie Murphy, so this film is what it is: nothing special, if not for the presence of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I like but hasn’t been on screen a lot lately, and Kevin Bacon, whom I would like to be like. I’m not sure I laughed once, but the same can be said for the original film. As far as I’m concerned, the last two minutes of the film would have been enough. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
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The ABC of Death , directed and written by so many people that I won’t list them here, filmed in several countries and continents, 2012.
After recovering a bit from the headache, but still not wanting anything too demanding, after seeing it mentioned at the end of Adam Scovell’s book on Folk Horror, I tried this anthology of 26 horror shorts, one for each letter of the alphabet. Most of the fun comes from trying to guess the title of each short, i.e., the word that starts with the expected letter. The quality level is very inconsistent from one title to the other; there’s some nasty violence depicted towards animals, and an inordinate amount of scary toilets and bodily functions.
All in all, I liked 8 episodes, so not too bad: Nacho Vigalondo’s Apocalypse, Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s Bigfoot - not actually featuring any bigfoot, the very scary and sad Ingrown by Jorge Michel Grau, Banjong Pisanthanakun’s funny Nuptials, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s artsy Orgasm, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s self-referential Quack, Ben Wheatley’s Unearthed - the episode I liked the most and the reason the film is mentioned in Scovell’s book, with Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley, and WTF! by Jon Schnepp. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -
A Quiet Place: Day One , directed by Michael Sarnoski, written by Sarnoski with John Krasinski , US, 2024.
I left home for some other commitment, not expecting to go to the cinema before getting back, but I did. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but Day One felt to me like a live-action Pixar film. Good feelings, a lead character that slowly gets to open up, never any sense of threat despite huge monsters ready to jump on you as soon as whispers turn into a slightly louder sound. A very quiet cat. And a great last scene. Lupita Nyong’o is excellent as usual. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Baghead , directed by Alberto Corredor, written by Bryce McGuire and Christina Pamies, UK/Germany, 2023.
Spanish director Alberto Corredor debuts with this adaptation of his own short film from 2017. This also means that the fact the premise is somewhat similar to the one in Talk To Me is totally accidental, at least on Corredor’s part.
Due primarily to the fact that I wasn’t bored, I’m not as negative on this film as most of the reviewers were. But it’s also true that I wasn’t bored because the story develops in a quite unpredictable way… though such unpredictability comes at the expense of the film’s internal logic and rules. ⭐️⭐️ -
The Others , written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, US/Spain, 2001.
I had not revisited Amenábar’s twist on The Turn of the Screw in twenty years, and it still holds very well, though it mostly just relies on its eery atmosphere rather than anything happening for the longest part of the film. I found the way things are finally revealed amazing. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Longlegs , written and directed by Osgood Perkins, US, 2024.
Oh dear, this film. Had I had the time, I would have rewatched it immediately after it ended. And it’s the kind of film that creeps under your skin and stays there. Crazy and illogical like a David Lynch film, but still it feels like everything makes perfect sense. Maika Monroe is great as usual, Nicolas Cage is showy but in a unique way (not the usual over-the-top Cage). I think in time this might become a five-star favourite for me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Jug Face , written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle, US, 2013.
I found this film mentioned in a random YouTube video about lesser-known folk horror films. Sean Young is in it, and Sean Bridgers looked vaguely familiar, and it turns out I should recognise Larry Fessenden by now. Anyway, I liked the central performance by Lauren Ashley Carter, and the way the movie slowly reveals the peculiar beliefs of this small community. ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
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The Witches , directed by Nicolas Roeg, written by Alan Scott, US/UK, 1990.
I had not seen any Roeg film other than Don’t Look Now and this one is available on Netflix, plus, I was curious about this ‘most terrifying kids movie’ (citation needed, it would say on Wikipedia) adapted from Roald Dahl. I understand Anjelica Huston’s character’s unmasked face can be quite horrifying. For me, the most upsetting part was the prologue about the little Norwegian girl. And the puppet mice. I loved the shot where the camera moves from the left shoulder of the witch’s assistant, showing the unmasked Grand High Witch holding in front of her face the Anjelica-Huston-mask, to the assistant’s right shoulder, with Huston finishing ‘putting her face on’. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
In summary:
- 8 films, 7 of which can be classified as horror, plus a comedy/action movie
- 1 sequel, 1 prequel/sequel, 1 adapation, 5 original films
- 4 US films, 2 US/European co-productions, 1 UK/Germany co-production, a film from all over the world
- 1 film from the 90s, 1 from the 2000s, 2 from the 2010s, 4 films from the current decade
Film-of-the-week is Longlegs.